tag: counterfeit chips

Globalization is a double-edged sword. Without a doubt, it nourishes competition, offers a plethora of independent sources, and bounty of supplies from a global pool of vendors. That is the good side. The downside is that control becomes a management nightmare. Well-oiled, traditional supply chains systems will have to be redesigned to function across a variety of variables that can interrupt t... » read more

In the past two months the CEOs of Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics delivered their annual high-level messages to their respective user groups. Semiconductor Engineering attended all of the speeches at these conferences, as it did in 2014 (see story here).
From a high level, the big issues for CEOs last year were Moore's Law, the costs of design, the impact of low power, and business-... » read more

Counterfeit chips are here to stay. There are all kinds of reasons they should never be used, but certain segments of the chip market have more critical fallout from such chips than others.
In most cases counterfeit chip use is unintentional. It simply goes undetected in the vast supply chain, sometimes with life-threatening repercussions. But whether in life-safety or low-end consumer produ... » read more